The Information Dividend: Why IT Makes You 'Happier'

Prepared for BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (formerly known as British Computer Society), by Trajectory Partnership, this report shows that access to information technology has a "statistically significant, positive impact on life satisfaction". In addition, the report finds that women, those on low incomes, and those with few educational qualifications benefit most from access to information technology (IT) and achieve greater increased life satisfaction from using it.

The report is based on research, the first phase of which involved the analysis of large global social research data sets. This analysis was followed by in-depth research into how IT access and usage influences life satisfaction in the United Kingdom (UK). The latter included an analysis of data from the British Household Panel Survey plus original primary qualitative and quantitative research programmes.

An Excerpt from the section of the report titled "What Does This Mean for IT?" follows:

"This suggests (at least) six issues for debate on the future of IT and well-being:

• Enabling greater access to IT and the internet and accelerating access to broadband clearly has a positive impact on those who are most disadvantaged in society. This research establishes more emphatically than ever before that these benefits are not just economic but also social.
• Empowering beneficial use of information and communications technology through education.
• Design and innovation focused on improving well-being and life satisfaction.
• Technophobia remains a barrier to trial and usage. This research shows that once these barriers are overcome, internet access and IT usage result in a significant and almost immediate uplift in life satisfaction which produces an equality effect. The appropriate portrayal of IT use - particularly social networking and other social aspects of IT use - that are so often the subject of scorn in the media and public policy arenas should be addressed. This may be a lesson for social marketers and others such as charities dealing with the issue of digital access and equality.
• The profession and policy makers may want to address the sense found among our qualitative research participants that IT is complex (and therefore difficult to understand and to derive benefits from) and that the pace of change is so rapid as to readily render obsolete whatever skills they acquire.
• Women are the key beneficiaries of access to IT in the UK and in developing countries. Focusing on enabling them to overcome the social, educational, and personal ‘fear’ of IT may be a step towards accelerating solutions to the digital exclusion problem. This may require a re-thinking of attitudes to involving women in technology education as well as targeting them from a social policy point of view."